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…acceleration of e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic, how does the approaching holiday shopping season look? “Santa's turning from reindeers to robots this year.” — Rick Faulk, CEO, Locus Robotics “Santa's turning from reindeers to robots this year,” said Faulk. “We're seeing a couple of dynamics. The peak is happening earlier this year, as companies offer sales before Black Friday to…
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…labor shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, reported the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) today. Third-quarter 2021 sales brought the total number of orders so far this year to nearly 29,000 units valued at $1.48 billion, the best numbers ever recorded for the North American robotics market, said Ann Arbor, Mich.-based A3. The number of units sold increased by 37%,…
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…demand amid worker shortages and COVID-19 restrictions, said NVIDIA. The AI and computing challenges of AMRs are similar to those of autonomous vehicles, according to the company. In industrial facilities, robots “travel miles of aisles to roll up millions of products to assist teams of moving people,” it said. “Obstacles are ever-present.” As manufacturing centers and warehouses are reconfigured or…
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While the COVID-19 pandemic increased interest in robots for disinfection and social distancing, robots also promise to help shorthanded hospital staffs diagnose patients while reducing the spread of pathogens. Touchlab yesterday said that a hospital in Finland is using its Välkky system, which is designed to give remote clinicians a sense of touch. “In the past, telerobots have been limited…
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…2022, began to answer before COVID-19. That’s when it launched the reinvention of the supply chain that largely supports the Macy’s brands. One metric for the company is the “inventory productivity,” according to Dennis Mullahy, chief supply officer at Macy's. “If I can generate the same amount of sales with the least number of inventory receipts and fewer moves, I…
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…Mark 3 release during the COVID-19 pandemic? Theobald: The pandemic has focused us as a species on challenges. It was hard for customers to deploy new technologies when people couldn't get on site to map a space. But at the executive level, they understood for the first time how important flexibility is in the automation they adopt. Prior to the…
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…from geopolitical conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic affected robotics developers? “It was a massive disruption,” replied Lau. “Being unable to get parts limited our ability to build robots for two years. Fortunately, we had a good team that could employ creative solutions to get parts we need. We're stockpiling certain serial numbers of parts.” While the robotics industry tends to…
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…to adapt and scale seamlessly. COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of our labor-driven supply chain infrastructure — it showed us that our offshore networks can easily be disrupted. The pandemic also indirectly exacerbated the labor shortage problem two-fold: factories have been forced to operate at reduced capacity to respect the new social distancing directives, and in many cases, unemployment benefits…
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…exponentially this past year, with COVID-19 and everyone shipping products. Everyone is trying to optimize internal logistics, from candy to pharmaceuticals. They're also trying to limit fork truck traffic.” “Logistics and e-commerce is the third space we're seeing demand higher-payload robots,” he added. “There is demand for AMRs in grocery, but those are mainly smaller loads that are prepicked, sorted,…
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…never been greater, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and retailers deal with back-to-school sales and the approaching holiday season, according to GXO Logistics. “When we talk about warehouse automation, it's clearly an ecosystem,” explained Sandeep Sakharkar, chief information officer at GXO Logistics. “We've evaluated automation across the board—not just robotic movement and picking devices like robot arms or devices for…
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…remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic did not slow down innovation, said igus. The company cited 168 product developments, such as motion-plastics gears manufactured via injection molding, with 740 different items available in its online shop. igus' 4-year-old smart plastics business unit launched 12 new products for condition monitoring, preventive maintenance, and the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2021…
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…and largely spearheaded by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company shifted its focus from hardware to software. “The pandemic gave us the ability to deploy all these robots because everybody needed them,” said Kim Losey, CEO of Rapid Robotics. “We figured out how to use primarily cobots at that time to do all kinds of machine tending tasks, from pad printing…
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…e-commerce growth slowed because the COVID-19 pandemic abated. Examples included Seegrid and IAM Robotics. In January, 6RS announced integrated offerings with Soft Robotics, Fast Lane and Packout. Source: 6 River Systems Experts react to 6 River Systems news Robotics 24/7 asked the following experts about their thoughts on 6 River Systems changing hands and trends in the wider mobile robotics…
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…ever. The first year of COVID-19 was far less challenging. People were more interested in moving. Now, people have been hunkering down with the Delta variant, so hiring is still a big challenge. The robotics industry is also dealing with supply chain challenges. If you ask me what keeps me up at night, it's these two things—staffing and supply chains.…
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…year, with the toll of COVID-19 on global business, more companies than ever before are gravitating towards a pay-per-use model with no hefty upfront financial commitments. As companies’ revenues decline, this is going to become a permanent trend. We’ve seen startups switch from a software licensing business to a full-service business and adopting RaaS to be more responsive to customers’…
GENISOM AI makes ICRA debut at conference in Vienna
World's first omni-modal evaluation including tactile sensing for…
Ultrasonic sensing enhances robotics perception
Cybernetix Ventures’ event kicks off Robotics Tech Week 2026 slate of events
